“Apple yesterday said it sold 4 million Macs in the March quarter, a 12% decline from the same period the year before, and a larger contraction than for the personal computer business as a whole,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld.
“The year-over-year downturn in Mac sales was the second straight down quarter, and excepting a brutal 22% drop at the end of 2012, the largest since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007,” Keizer reports. “Apple had been on an extended streak of besting the PC average, with sometimes-impressive gains during the four-years-and-counting slump of the overall market. But the March quarter’s results put an end to the years-long run, which the Cupertino, Calif. company often touted.”
Keizer reports, “Neither CEO Tim Cook or CFO Luca Maestri mentioned the end of the streak in Tuesday’s earnings call with Wall Street.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Perhaps if Apple updated some Macs once in a while? Just sayin’.
Note to Apple brass: Complacency kills.
Steve Jobs deplored laziness and incompetence.
SEE ALSO:
Apple reports earnings miss in Q216 – April 26, 2016
Apple’s languishing Macintosh: Is a massive re-invention near? – April 25, 2016
Hey Apple, how about shipping a new computer sometime? – April 15, 2016
I hate to think how many Mac Pro’s they’d sell if they made them to pro specs instead of the usual minimalist design approach. Pro’s won’t take being force fed the wrong approach and simply switch platforms, which is obviously not helpful to Mac sales.
Right. It wouldn’t be an admission of failure to reinstate the cheese graters. Keep the cylinders as another line, that’s fine. I doubt Jony Ive would care if that happened, and Pro users would suddenly hail Tim Cook as champion rather than chump.
Tweet: Tim — you talk up switchers to iOS. But think about switchers from OS X.
After reading all these posts I get it and Apple should too. The Mac pro has to be done and done right, certainly with the best processor technology with one or more multi core processors on the bus, multiple slots for graphics cards or multimrdia cards, multiple sata channels (at least 4) for ssd arrays. It should come in a box that is easily recognizable and upgradeable, with enough airflow to keep all the components cool. The old mac pro case would be a good start. They could talk to pixar for help on the specs.
It would be a statement that shouts WE ARE APPLE. WE ARE COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY.
Ironically, When Steve came back to Apple he killed off the Mac OS licensing program which had resulted in Power Computing taking a chunk of the “pro” market from Apple.
Then Ive comes along and kills Apple’s “pro” market by labelling a nice/novel Mac as “pro” when it is not.
Apple, either license Mac OS to someone else to sell “pro” machines or make one yourself! Please!
I don’t mind thinking it. Maybe 70? Actually I wonder if they’d even sell a million.
More than they do now.
Yeah, but would it even be worth the effort? If they pour R&D into a Pro refresh and sales don’t offset the expenditure, then wouldn’t that have been a poor use of money?
I’m wondering if people are aware of a market of over 10-20 million Pro purchases I’m just not seeing OR is it just a personal desire to have a Mac with Pro specs even though the sales may not support it?
Dell and HP have no problem doing it. What the hell is wrong with Apple?
I wouldn’t use Dell or HP as the finest examples of how to perform in the PC world. They don’t make a fraction of the profits that Apple makes, even when Apple has a bad quarter.
Does Honda/Mercedes/etc .. sell lots of Formula 1 race cars (and at a profit?) Nope….
Sometimes, the point of a top-of-the-line product isn’t to make gobs of money in profit, but to be the petri dish to bring focus to technology pushes … or merely as a “Halo Effect” product:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
Of course it would. You start chipping away at any segment’s sales it could have a knock-down effect on Macs and Apple devices. It’s certainly no skin off their nose to do it and do it right, even if it were a “loss leader item.” It just adds more luster to a complete line of computers worth owning and to those climbing up the Mac scale. Not everything needs to sell 50 million of something to make a good profit, as Apple has proved over the years.
Advantages of having a real pro line:
The pro line could release early forms of performance improving research while prices are still high, so those advances are more polished when released in cheaper form for mainstream Macs.
The pro line allows shops to standardize on Mac even when only a percentage of users need Pro’s. Meaning more regular Macs are sold.
The pro line means the most influential purchasers recommend Macs to others.
The pro line allows pro users, who are most likely to come up with new innovative software, to develop and therefore ship on Mac first.
The pro line stops users (like me) from having to continue to develop for Windows because my software needs multipole top of the line GPUs to run well, when I would rather be Mac only.
Yeah, somethings gotta give here I agree. Same old ain’t gonna cut it anymore.
Hell they might even sell a boat load if they did a spec update. At this point no one wants to be the guy who shelled out $6,000+ and then a month later Apple finally released an update that is way over due.
No one wants to purchase an outdated, underpowered, ridiculous piece of obsolescence. Apple has not kept pace competitively or technologically. Tim Cook has shown no interest or regard for the Mac. Well, Tim, how’s that Q2 results taste now? Tastes like failure, huh?
Your trollish Apple hate has made you boorishly predictable, annoying and useless. I take it a bushel of apples klunked you repeatedly on your head as a kid and you never quite recovered.
You are so wrong, I love Apple, I just despise the people dragging it down.
Your criticisms aren’t helpful and show zero insight. People who just blandly criticize like you are all sound and fury signifying nothing. Your posts are like nails on a chalkboard and about as useful.
Say hi to your mom for me, please.
Comments like that show you up for the essential dimwit troll you are.
Apple design had a bad year in 2015. The watch, not compelling for many Apple lovers and ultimately a secondary screen for an iPhone 6 or better. The newest Magic Mouse has to be stabbed by the charging cable in order to power up. The iPad Pro pencil has to plug in to the Lightning port and has to have been broken off in many homes filled with small children. The iPhone 6 battery had that ridiculous hump. Don’t get me started about that 12″ MacBook. Even my original MacBook Air had two ports.
Don’t you think that all of this Meh had something to do with apple’s lackluster year?
Not exactly. The Apple Pencil CAN be plugged into the lighting port of the iPad if necessary or desired. The pencil also comes with a female to female lightning adapter so that the pencil can be plugged into, and charged with any standard lightning cable.
I doubt if many people make their technology buying decisions based on how you charge the mouse. Ditto with the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro.
The hump for the iPhone 6 battery is not a feature of the iPhone but of the extended battery case. That’s optional, and again, I don’t think a single person buys the iPhone based on the look of the battery case.
True, it probably didn’t adversely affect the *initial* purchase – – but the poor experience with living with it will certainly have a negative influence over *future* purchases.
if Apple brass doesn’t get some of the reasons why:
— a 6 Year old previous generation Mac Pro with an UPGRADED CARD beats a CURRENT cylinder Mac Pro 2-3 times in GPU tasks and beats a current Macbook Pro 5 Times.
http://barefeats.com/imac5k20.html
there is NO mac currently where you can put in an upgrade card.
(btw: GPU cards are different for different uses: gaming, 3D pro rendering etc)
— an HP workstation renders a movie in 2 hrs which took a cylinder Mac Pro 12 hours (and the mac at lower rez).
— they don’t build the Mid Tower people are clamouring for. a recent poster on MDN had 96 votes (avg 4.5 stars) when he suggested this. Neither does apple provide a ‘classic Tower’ with upgradable components that avoids the ‘rats nest’ of wires that is prevalent with cylinder Pro users.
it’s like “we don’t build big iPhones no matter what customers say”.
— a Macbook Air (not updated for a long time) has MORE ports than a Macbook yet the ‘Air’ is supposed to be the ‘lighter’ version. huh?
Confuses the line. Jobs deplored product confusion.
— where the Mac MARKETING?
Mac sales beat iPad Revenues yet iPads get ads, Macs don’t.
No serious Mac campaign since Mac PC Guy (ended 2009) .
Near Zero Mac marketing during the Win 8 fiasco years. (they will study this misstep in Business school in the future). Microsoft moved 200-300 million copies of Win 10…
Just saw 3 different Apple Watch ads on TV in one show yesterday, yet Watch sales estimates last quarter is about half Mac’s.
Why the no Mac love?
IBM is doing more in selling Macs to businesses than Apple and have a convincing argument about ease of use, better ROI, lower tech support (go read their marketing posts) . Why Apple didn’t really push these advantages in marketing for years is bizarre…
— went to Walmart 2 years ago to get Thunderbolt cables for my new Macbook Pro. Walmart ‘Apple expert’ standing next to Thunderbolt equipped Macs didn’t know what Thunderbolt was. Didn’t carry mini-D etc cables etc so no way for customers of Walmart MacBooks to connect to ext. monitors! Apple display even now in shambles, apparently not updated since Jobs, (selling iPhones by GLUING A BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOCOPY of the phone on the counter. They sold the display phone) meanwhile Samsung, Microsoft tables are new with bright internally lit tables. (this might be localized to my Walmart as I live in an isolated area but it’s sad).
Jobs was fanatical about how big box retailers sold apple products and cancelled several large contracts.
Where is Apple Marketing? Don’t they train resellers? Where is Tim Cook or Shiller don’t they visit resellers?
ETC.
Agree that the Macbook Air needs to be killed off. No reason for it with the Macbook. I think it will be eliminated sometime in the near future.
As to training resellers, like Walmart? I am sure Apple must have a group of employees dedicated to training their resellers and enforcing Apple standards on product display, etc. That being said, it’s a herculean task when considering all of the resellers. Even then these other store’s employees generally will never have the product knowledge and dedication that one would find in an Apple owned store.
Jobs was concerned about how resellers sold Apple products but that’s why he created the Apple Stores. However, Apple has grown so large that the Apple Stores cannot do it all, and hence Apple has a whole lot more resellers. Not a lot you can do about that, unless you want to pull out of your resellers and then you really slash sales of the products.
Getting back to Walmart, quite frankly I don’t see in my local Walmart them doing justice to any of their technology brands that they sell.
you bring a valid opinion about difficulty of getting resellers on board etc.
But for me I expect Apple , APPLE ! to exceed standards, their marketing (and training resellers is part of that) should be above the rest just like their iPhone designs.
the greatness of Jobs was that he was good at everything, he was tech nerd, a product guy, a design guy, a manager but also a marketing guy . Today some people flame me when I talk about the importance of marketing at Apple (“we don’t need Pepsi Cola salesmen!” ) . People forget that when Woz was building the Apple 1, Jobs was marketing. Marketing and sales is intrinsic to Apple. I read a long post on how Jobs wanted the glass staircases (hundreds of thousands $ each as they were earthquake proof ) because it was a great marketing tool (it made customers walk up to the next level). There was NO stinginess on ad costs. He got Ridley Scott to direct 1984.
Products FIRST but once it’s done Jobs marketed them to the max.
——-
as an ex advertising guy, I must say after Jobs Apple marketing in general has been lacklustre. Recently it has improved somewhat but there were years it was bleak and confused (anybody name a recent ad campaign that went viral like Think Different, 1984 etc ?). Apple sales are spectacular but with better marketing I think it would be even better.
forgot one more big reason for Mac sales not being even bigger:
the lack of good mid tower between the cripple Mac Mini and the expensive crippled Mac Pro turns off many potential WINDOWS SWITCHERS as many PC folks don’t want to get rid of their monitors and get an iMac.
Also because of no advertising many don’t even know the Mac Mini exists.
—–
In Best Buy etc I’ve listened in to sales pitches from their salespeople. When a potential customer comes in and asks what’s the difference between Windows and OSX , the sales person often says “Nothing. Except you get more cheaper software with Windows” . Big box retailers sell a whole bunch of PC stuff , not only are they not well versed in the intricacies of Apple products they also don’t want to damage their PC sales. So it’s up to Apple to educate consumers with MARKETING (ads) , which is sadly practically non existent with Mac. To the general public (including the general press) OSX and Windows is the same , Macs are just more shiny and more expensive.
The darn Macs last way to long. My 2008 MBP still runs smoothly. Daily task is fast. No need for rendering anything so speed for that is not a must. If it ever breaks or can’t be used for basic stuff then I’ll upgrade. Apple just builds them too well. 😊
My wife uses a 2009 MBP for basic functions and she is complaining about its slowness. Dual-core processors simply don’t cut it anymore.
I have the same machine. Swap out the hard drive for a SSD. It will make a dramatic difference.
you might also need something like “Free Memory” app.
sometimes when you close applications the memory buffer is not cleared so eventually you run out of RAM and the machine is using the HD as a ram drive. This is going to be slow and if you got a slow HD or full HD your machine is going to crawl.
On my Mac Pro when I use “Free Memory” I can sometimes recover 4 or more GB of RAM.
I have 8gb RAM on it and its plenty fast. Web sites, Pages, eMail, all the basic stuff. Fast enough. Maybe it needs more RAM.
Agreed! (though love the quality build). We have a bunch of Macs here, including two early 2009 iMacs in daily use, one of them upgraded to SSD. Just bought a fully-loaded iMac 27″ though, a tremendous workhorse and a great value! Some of us remember when a 1GB hard drive was “vast” and cost $1,500. Now you can buy a 1TB drive for what it would have cost for a SCSI cable.
I think the real miss here is touch 3d is not touchid. Touch ID was a killer game changing feature for the 5S that helped keep the needle moving up. Remember big form factors didn’t exist then and sales still went up. 3D touch is a “gimmick” and people saw through that for the 6s. The result a failed upgrade cycle was a true miss in every sense of the word. Apple did a Samsung/Microsoft here and allowed the marketers “Phil Schiller” to start to dictate product. Now we have no magic we have product specs and sales numbers. Big wake up call for Apple. We will now know how good Tim Cook actually is. Can he lead recovery or has he been riding the iPhone the whole time.
Most of Apple’s Mac lineup is in need of updates, as Intel’s Skylake delays have hampered Apple’s ability to launch refreshed models.
And it’s only going to get worse. I’m sure even Steve Jobs couldn’t have gotten Intel to do any better.
Terrible attempt at an excuse for Apple’s laziness. The Skylakes have been out for months. HP and Dell have been shipping them.
Twenty years ago, Jobs said: “If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago.”
He then came back to Apple and milked that Macintosh for quite a long while (fifteen years). He did help Apple move to the next big thing (iPhone), but he died before completely killing the Macintosh. It is now up to TIm Cook to finish the Mac off once and for all. There is no more money in desktop PC to be made. Kill off the line and move everyone over to iOS. Those who won’t move will have to pick another desktop (perhaps WIndows?), but from a business angle, Macintosh has looooong been more of a nostalgia effort than a significant source of profits, never mind platform for innovation.
As a daily Mac user, I will agonize over its demise, but it clearly seems inevitable at this point.
eh…
Mac revenues just beat iPad’s in the quarter just announced.
with NO Mac marketing and with some Macs not upgraded for years.
Throughout the slog of competition, neglect, circumstance and time, the Mac has been a great companion and indomitable survivor. I love the Mac.
as usual you say it well.
We all love Mac. And like all other Apple products, Mac brings in insane profit margins.
But if you look at Apple’s treatment of the platform (painfully late upgrades, zero marketing), it is rather clear that their outlook for the platform is quite limited. That kind of treatment for the Mac clearly shows that Apple has no major plans for the future of the Mac and will eventually shut it down.
There was a time when iPod was the biggest growth machine. Today, iPod is enjoying the same treatment as the Mac. At least iPod doesn’t require significant commitment of resources in order to maintain the product line (Mac does, though).
As I said below, we all love the Mac dearly, but it would be prudent for all of us to start psychologically preparing ourselves for its departure. My hope is that, by then, iOS matures to the point where it can painlessly succeed the Mac in functionality, features and scale-ability.
Wanted to change my iMac (mid-2011) this year but couldn’t bring me to buy an entry level iMac like I always do – sufficient
for what I use it for. I would not pay that kind of money for
such a weak offer. Just an opinion.
This is the most idiotic misrepresentation of this statement I have ever seen. Steve Jobs was referencing the so called “war” between the PC and Mac – his desire was not to kill the Macintosh but rather to “milk” it on it’s own merits. At this time, the whole angle that Apple had to sell Macs was a rather arrogant and misplaced “Windows is just stolen technology and therefore Macs are intrinsically better” without earnestly seeking to sort out any problems that they had the MacOS or hardware designs and management.
Once Jons returned, he put an end to the “war” and started doubling down on the Macs unique technological strengths…emphasis on technological. This provided substance to the argument that a Mac might be a better choice than a Windows box. A great example of this (and one from my own professional field) is the audio subsystems in OS X and the incredibly swift adoption of Lightpeek technology (aka Thunderbolt) There still is no equivalent in the Windows environment to the interoperability and performance on CoreAudio which Apple created (Apple – a computer hardware and software creator – created a plugin architecture called AudioUnits for heavens sake – normally a job left to well entrenched DAW creators like Steinberg or Avid, and its performance is perfectly competitive with VST and AAX etc. meanwhile DirectX plugins are almost no where to be found) not to mention that the adoption of Lightpeek has enabled third party audio interface manufacturers to make the lowest latency interfaces seen on any platform due to the bandwidth the TECHNOLOGY provides (incidentally it should be technologically possible on Windows, the only problem is the lack of hardware support from manufactures for Lightpeek and a subsystem that would support the standard direct from the OS provider aka Microsoft to ensure consistency in mission critical pro audio environments).
These two examples alone make a Mac an almost no-brainier for someone in the professional audio field, and both of these are technology driven.
You see, Steve was always a man driven by the proliferation of incredible new and USEFUL tech and wrapping it up in a way that your average user can understand and utilise – this is what is meant by “milking something for all it’s worth”. To put it in more expanded terms, “What technological limits can we exploit in this platform and what ways can we implement that technology so people can benefit until there is realistically no further new, game changing, tech that we can showcase in this platform” (again using Lightpeek as an example, the 3rd implementation of this – Thunderbolt 3 – offers such incredible bandwith that real time monitoring of audio processes becomes a reality, and once you can monitor in real time without any perceivable latency to the end user, you have essentially reached the limits of the technology as perceived by the end user).
iOS is great (in fact a lot of what is loved about CoreAudio had been brought over to the platform, and in the latest release, they have support for cross app audio routing and limited AU plugin support – impressive) the iPad, and iPhone are great too, but it just does not make sense to attempt to mirror a pro audio setup on this platform. Yes, there are incredible pro audio apps on iOS, but their capabilities are wholly different to what you would be doing on a desktop environment. In essence, it adds MORE by virtue of the new interface and multitouch paradigm rather than seeking to REPLACE or mirror what you would be doing on the desktop. And this is where you are misguided, Jobs always sought to explore “the next big thing” to find something NEW that could be added to what had come before – an outhouse extension if you will. You wouldn’t knock down your whole house to build an incredible extension to it (even if the outhouse had all the newest build and could replace some fucntions of the rest such as “throw a mattress of the floor and sleep”). It is true that over time new technology renders older technology obsolete, but the GOAL is never to do this (or at least it wasn’t for Jobs).
The goal is simply to use the new tech to create something new, and if, over time, the previous product line built of the old tech becomes utterly obsolete as shown thorough no one using it in any scenario, then it natrually ends.
You made a great effort in writing that response, and the effort deserves praise.
However, I disagree with your interpretation of Steve’s statement from 1996. Your version seems to stretch the meaning extremely far in order to shoehorn it into the narrative that we all would love to be true.
Unfortunately, his statement was truly exactly what it sounded like: milk the Mac (the platform) for as long as it will go, and meanwhile, work on the next big thing (the iOS). This is precisely what he did when he returned. He figured out a way to milk that Mac for a long time, but got himself busy, first with the iPod, then with the iOS, bringing the next big thing.
Your detailed explanation of CoreAudio and everything that came after it illustrates perfectly how Jobs extended the ‘milking’ of the Macintosh. The point is, the milking is soon coming to an end. Among Apple users (hundreds of millions by now), a diminishing percentage are Mac users. The platform is becoming less and less justifiable to support, considering that the cost of that support is greater than for iOS (which brings dramatically larger profits). It makes perfect business sense to heed Jobs’s advice and consolidate the two platforms into one scalable solution.
And Jobs himself never shied from destroying a perfectly good house in order to build a new one in its place. That’s in fact exactly what he did with the Jackling House, which he successfully demolished, after a protracted court battle. Untimely death prevented him from building something new and beautiful in its place…
Predrag, you are just as wrong about this as you are so many things in American culture, including your assertion a few years ago that high-end audio was dead because none of your friends bought that stuff.
Wow.
But high-end audio IS dead! The optical formats that wee supposed to bring high quality audio revolution (SACD or DVD-A) are, for all intents and purposes extinct, and no comparable format exists today for commercial distribution of music. The highest audio quality that currently enjoys widespread adoption is still the audio CD, and even that one is being rapidly replaced by the lossy compression of AAC.
I’m afraid you picked the wrong post of mine to compare…
As for the Mac, yes, it is still by far the best desktop platform out there, its growth is still stronger than the competition (last quarter notwithstanding), but for Apple and its business, there is no opportunity for growth and tectonic shift in innovation in the platform.
I’ve been a Mac user for only 20 years (since System 7). I’ve converted dozens of Windiws sufferers and continue to do so. But I’m still pretty sure that Apple will abandon us all pretty soon and consolidate everything in iOS. Keep in mind, the power of iOS hardware of today is greater than the Macs of 10 years ago. Hollywood was editing feature films on those macs back then.
Again, your view of things are so skewed I see now why you don’t understand the South or Conservatism (or much of anything to do with American culture)
There is absolutely no correlation between the drop in sales of CD and the rise of MP3 vs the popularity Hi-Fi. If that were true, then Hi-Fi would have been considered dead in its heyday of the mid-1970s because every car had an AM radio in it.
Hi-res audio files, DSD DACs and better speakers for lower price are all the rage in audio circles. It’s amazing you are out of the loop on this. Even vinyl sales are at their highest in almost 3 decades.
And the point is not how big the market is, the point is there is a resurgence in quality audio after ‘our long national nightmare’ of 128 MP3s.
But the bigger picture is how bad you draw conclusions from data that is not relatable to your conclusions. iOS is an os. Eventually the desktop might be merged with that OS but they will still be more powerful than the phones or pads.
But then again, no one ever said ‘artist’ are all that smart…(well, Skunk Baxter is pretty cool)
It seems to me that your source of disagreement with me isn’t over the facts and opinions I present here; it is of my general view of American political landscape. Looking at the world through your extremely myopic “Southern Conservative” lens, it is no surprise that my opinion (and probably, the most of the world) will look askew to you.
On a more substantive argument, you claim something without substantiating it with anything: …”There is absolutely no correlation between the drop in sales of CD and the rise of MP3 vs the popularity Hi-Fi”… First, we weren’t discussing the popularity of “Hi-Fi” (although I’m not sure what exactly do you mean by “Hi-Fi” within the context of this discussion). Plenty of research and analysis clearly demonstrates the correlation, and convincingly argues direct causation, between increase of digital downloads and drop in CD sales.
With respect to vinyl resurgence, this is clearly driven by the nostalgia factor and not the actual audio quality. A quick look at the specifications and it is clear that vinyl is significantly, and quite noticeably inferior to CD; form abysmal crosstalk between channels (down to just 15dB for higher end of the frequency spectrum), poor dynamic range, especially for grooves closer to the centre of the record, crosstalk between the grooves (“pre-echo”), vastly inconsistent equalisation (RIAA being about the only standard, but not nearly universal), very inconsistent frequency response (due to, in no small part, the quality of equalisation), not to mention the inconsistencies in vinyl stamping process, producing physical artifacts in the grooves that translate into unwanted noise, pops, cracks, clicks. Then there is pitch variation, rumble noise, tracking problems, etc, etc, etc. The newly discovered love affair with vinyl is quite very much based on the “retro” qualities it possesses. As for their sales numbers, their peak was in 1973 (for singles) at around 230 million, and 1977 (for LPs / EPs) at 340 million. Today, they have reached the “all-time high” of 55 million; a significant increase from 300,000 from 2000, but a far cry from the heyday of 70s.
And in general, with respect to the “resurgence” of high quality audio, no data exists out there that would support it. No mainstream online store exists out there that sells hi-res audio. No mainstream label puts out releases in audio of quality higher than CD. I looked everywhere, tried googling high and low, and couldn’t find a single article that would support the assertion that hi-res audio files are now all the rage. They may well be in your own personal circles, but apparently, Google hasn’t picked up on that (yet).
And the point is exaclty how large the market is; a group of friends becoming interested in Hi-Fi stereos and turntables of the 80s does not a resurgence in quality audio make.
As for the iOS and Mac OS, we don’t seem to disagree there. You say exactly what I said; iOS is an OS, and eventually the desktop may be merged with that OS. I never argued that all computing will be done on iPhones (or iPads); just that the Mac as we know it (and it means the desktop OS; after all, hardware is just chips and circuits) is still just hardware, and for heavier lifting, heavier hardware will be needed.
I like your passion but I can’t help feeling it’s misplaced here. Remember your adamant defence of the Jobsian ideal iPhone screen size against all arguments for a larger screen? You were morally certain that Apple would never go large.
I think Macs entered the enterprise space by way of the BYOD practice and are poised to expand through initiatives like the IBM partnership. After years of fruitless siege warfare, Ilium fell to just such a stratagem. The iPhone was the Trojan Horse.
Business — that’s where the Mac will be sustained, though it may fall in the affections of consumers wooed away by smartphones. There is no need to psychologically prepare for a bleak, Macless future as you propose. As long as Work is performed, and passionate Workers such as ourselves so highly value and desire our tools, Apple will make them; we need not become jilted lovers.
Exactly, Mac marketshare is growing but low. Mac share could be increase by many times if Apple got series about winning PC Wars 2.0 and the Enterprise is the place of most potential growth, but consumers too.
Microsoft is on the ropes handicapped with a failed mobile strategy (billions in losses and write offs). Apple should rev up Mac improvements, marketing and get Mac sales up at least 5x what they are.
Apple is looking for big growth opportunities, Macs should be an obvious and easy one for them.
No money to be made in PCs?
Forbes looked at this back in 2013 (now a bit dated):
“In the last quarter of 2012, Apple had 5% of the global PC market and 45% of the profit.”
http://fortune.com/2013/04/16/pie-chart-of-the-day-apples-oversize-share-of-pc-profits/
To use a layman’s analogy, PC Guy goes to the office and works a 40 hour workweek, gets paid $55. Friday afternoon, Mac Guy walks in, works 2 hours for the week … and gets paid $45.
Which job would you rather have?
That may well be true, but those $45 are still a tiny drop in the bucket of Apple profits from iOS. And the effort to build and sell those Macs (including building OS X, plus all the apps that go with it) is significantly greater than the effort that is needed for iOS and its line of hardware. This is becoming more and more difficult to financially justify at Apple.
But increasing Mac share at this point should be easy, given the Enterprise is now opening up to Mac, Microsofts decade of stumbling in both desktop and mobile, the halo effect of iOS on macOS (where before it went the other way), and the huge amount of marketshare headroom available in the PC market.
Apple could increase the Mac business to be more comparable to the iDevice business, and this would improve iDevice sales too.
It is pure crazy to continue neglecting what is still a huge market that Apple could own.
True, iOS is the 800 lb gorilla that’s demanding a lot of attention at Apple … but that’s also all growth above & beyond what the Mac business line has been doing (and except for this quarter its line has been steadily growing, not shrinking). As such, there’s just as much (actually more) money for OS X and Mac development today than there was 3, 5, and 10 years ago from within that same business unit.
Plus even if it was losing money, the Mac is still a strategic part of the overall ecosystem: Apple would want to offer Macs as a way to capture the customer’s entire experience as a means to keep them buying iOS devices.
MACS are in need. You can’t do everything on a iOS device. I can’t render video i can’t edit my webpages as easy i can’t have lots of tabs open in my browser jumping between them.
How people live without a computer i dont know. I guess if all you do is email Skype and such ok. But man i can’t do that. I have so much my iMac does for me daily. I am always rendering and capturing video, uploading video and multi tasking.
Then i have my MBA for just doing odd stuff. I tried an iPad but its not the same
+++
——
I have an iPad but it pales to my Mac with two big monitors connected to it for work. (one monitor maybe for Photoshop, 3D program like Lightwave with all their palettes , the other for work files, open manuals or reference videos and to keep eye on email etc).
For me iPads are good for travelling and stuff like reading books but not for serious production stuff.
Power and screen real estate for some types of work is so important it’s unbelievable .
I like iOS, I have an iPhone and an iPad, and I use them every day, well, the iPad not really very much, kind of a convenience around the the house to quickly look something up on the web. And the phone as a phone with a few great convenience apps.
But Davewrite, just like you , I use a Mac as an actual working device to produce something of worth, and, guess what, it is marketed to primarily iOS consumers, big surprise there.
Like the majority of our population these days, those iOS consumers are blissfully unaware of where the iOS apps and content come from…….the Mac. “I don’t know it just comes out of the sky or something”
The touch interface and file structure of iOS are (here it comes folks, sacrilege) are PRIMITIVE, in the sense they can’t possibly execute the level of varied inputs that you, I, and millions who create for a living must have. MUST HAVE They only need to be “primitive” because they don’t need to do much to deliver their content. Yes, sacrilegious I know.
It’s very much the same as someone in Manhattan who KNOWS that food comes from the grocery store, and because they personally can’t see the farm, IT CANNOT POSSIBLY EXIST.
Wrong.
Of course, somewhat exaggerated, not all of them believe that, but if it is not part of their daily life, well, it really does fall of the radar scope of most people.
Until the day its not there…….
but at that point, don’t blame me for it because I pointed out.
If its not the Mac it will have to be something else, so…
Personally I would like to see the Mac division sold off to someone who knows what to do with it. A Guy Kawasaki type person, who departed years ago? Some group of people like him? I know: if you didnt read about him on your iOS device, he couldnt possibly have existed.
Have a nice day, y’all. Have to get back to work producing HTML5 content that you iOS users can have something on your screen.
My wife is waiting for a MBP refresh. That HP Spectre is getting too much attention, too. I’d like to see all Macs updated. No rush to upgrade from our 6Plus phones, but our “trucks” are old. Don’t need a watch (yet) and I could not care less about an Apple car. The general feeling, even as an observer, is that not much is happening.
I have a Mac Pro Tower sitting at my home desk awaiting a reasonable replacement- that excludes the trashcan, the iMac, the Mac mini, or any laptop.
It is way past fucking time Apple shipped an updated monitor- Samsung is selling a UHD Display Port and HDMI model through Best Buy for $399 right now while Apple has the same old Monitor for $1,000 it has sold for years.
A company with the financial resources Apple has that does not compete in the Workstation market is giving the finger to many potential customers. Spend the money, Tim. You can piss away $3 Billion for a company that markets shitty headphones, defective Bluetooth Speakers and a Me Too Subscription music service but cannot see the time and money to give us a proper workstation that is not sacrificed on the altar of Jony Ive’s stylings.
I do not need a skinny desktop sealed shut with Intel Integrated Graphics and a glorified laptop CPU. I also do not need a $3,000 black trashcan that has no internal expansion and does not accept industry standard components. I want a proper workstation and thee are plenty more like me.
I enjoy my Macs, but the latest lineup leaves me wondering. First, how about offering a descent sized SSD drive for a reasonable price? Ignoring the Mac is a mistake. This will drive a lot of people to other machines and phones. It’s part of the ecosystem and needs to be supported.
I had to take in my 2011 17″MBP (upgraded with 8GB Ram, 1 TB SSD) for service and while I was there bought a new MBP in case Apple could not fix the problem. I got the old one back 5 days later in working order and returned the new one.
There is absolutely nothing compelling enough with the new MacBooks to justify me spending another $2000 until my old one actually dies.
I need to buy my daughter a new laptop for school in the fall and I honestly don’t know how I will justify the Mac premium given the current specs on the hardware. The only thing that will probably keep me buying a Mac in the immediate time frame is the security/malware benefit. I have Windows machines in my company and the upkeep needed just for web and email delivered malware is still a joke.
Looking at the comments here, we can conclude that we, the Apple fans, are quite passionate about the Mac (who knew, right?). This is understandable; Mac is the platform, the product that personified Apple and Jobs for more than 30 years, and after all, this side IS called Mac Daily News for a reason…
So, most of the comments either vigorously defend the state of health of the Mac business, or lament it, griping about the dumbing down of the Mac hardware and OS, lack of “pro” hardware choices (upgradeability, up-to-date components), etc.
The two facts seem to remain undisputed: the Mac, as a platform, is still the best desktop solution. Everyone who uses it knows it. Regardless of what you do, it is more reliable, more robust, more elegant, more efficient (fewer clicks/mouse movements to accomplish the same thing than the other OSes) and in general, better investment. The other fact: Mac has for quite some time been treated by Apple as the red-headed stepchild. Without serious commitment to marketing the platform (no major campaign in over 10 years), and without serious commitment to adjusting the product line to better match the need of the vocal proponents (the evangelists that bring others to switch), such as expandability and upgradeability, it is frustrating for all those people, who have known for decades about the superiority of the platform, to watch it being abandoned by Apple.
What I see clearly, and what most others here refuse to see, is the trajectory of the inevitable convergence of iOS and Mac OS X in favour of iOS. Apple may decide to allow for some powerful hardware (stronger than the iPad Pro), in order to address some of the needs of the more demanding Mac users, but I will not be surprised if Apple simply decided that desktop PC concept is ready to be put to death and winds down the Macintosh as we know it.
Four issues are at work here:
No Mac ads – crazy for such a large business.
Tim Cook thinks iPad will replace PC’s. – No Way!
Mac’s right now are underpowered and way overpriced.
http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/26/opinion-apple-macbook-storage-problem/
Fonts are too small – majority of Apple customers are over 50. I hear this all the time in adult education classes.
Yep, MDN. They need to address software issues getting worse with each release and TC needs to sit and become a visionary and not spend his time on political and social bandwagons that have no place in business. No one gives a rats a– about what he thinks.